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Do not miss this show in Davis, California. It features textiles from the collection of my travel partner, Cathy Cerny. UC Davis Design Museum, Cruess Hall, September 24 to December 9, 2018. See hours on the invitation image. Closed on Saturday.
Here is Cathy in the entrance to the show featuring her textiles from Japan. The show is absolutely wonderful.
The show is about techniques used in Japanese textiles. It is beautiful.
Not only beautifully done but also informative with cases of samples and tools.
Here is Cathy with Alicia Decker, the curator (center) and Bronte Blanco, the designer of the show.
Here I am with Cathy and two friends that came from Japan just for the opening of the exhibition.

We are going to hang my new work in the gallery in the Belvedere-Tiburon Library today. The opening reception is tomorrow from 6-8 pm in beautiful Tiburon, California. Please stop by and see it. It will be on until December 4, 2015.

Here it is: the video of my ruffle mobile. The three short ruffles are about 18″ long. I like it a lot; however, the juror did not and rejected them. I don’t like to be rejected but like the mobile so much more. Please click the YouTube logo to view in HD on the YouTube page.

There was a small but smashing exhibit of fragments that everyone was told to see and it was superb. “Fragmentary Tales: Selections from the Lloyd Cotsen Textile Traces Collection” . The pieces were mounted in what looked like foam core board with windows cut out for the textiles that gave each one a presence so it could be appreciated. This is how I mounted lots of my study pieces when I was teaching. I put a Mylar cover on them that could be lifted up and the textile lifted out. That was how the Met was mounting things in their collection at the time. Here are the ones that I really loved: A velvet from Uzbekistan, an African piece, an Italian Velvet and a scaffolded piece from Peru–the likes of which I’ve never seen. The contemporary piece with horse hair by Debra Warner, “Opens a Window”, especially inspired me. [click photos to enlarge]

Saturday night was the opening reception and end of the TSA Symposium. For me it was glorious in every way. My pieces were in the most prime location: in the front window and the first thing to be seen in the show. When it got dark the lighting was great with reflections in the window.

I stood nearby and got lots and lots of nice comments. The nicest part was getting praise from other artists and people who knew me or knew my name.
> click photos to enlarge

Adela Akers was the Artist In Residence at our deYoung Museum in San Francisco for the month if August. There were about a dozen of her perfectly lovely woven pieces on the walls, four clear glass partitions, her big loom, and large tables where visitors could try out her techniques. She was generous in explaining in as much detail as we wanted exactly how she created the work from the weaving, painted warps and sewing on small strips cut from foil caps on wine bottles. Her use of horse hair in the weaving is stunning. The glass partitions had beautiful images of her work from the 60′ s and her current work. One showed a video showing her process in detail. The reception was at night and the images were reflected on the floor as well. These photos were taken by Bob Hemstock, my computer and web guru.[click first photo for slide show]

Over the holidays I spent a lot of effort getting my entry ready to send to the jury for the Textile Society of America show. There were two photo shoots and much work on getting the entry just right. I submitted two days before the deadline. What a relief! I sent in 3 entries: “Four Veils”, “Heart Sutra No. 1” and “Heart Sutra No. 2” along with details of each.
[click photos to enlarge]

The first photo shows the set up for photographing “Four Veils”. A lot of care was taken to get the lighting just right.

This photo shows me fiddling at the last minute.The second shoot was for two of the pieces I did on pages from an old, dilapidated Japanese book. Again, to get them to show up in their frames took special lighting. I’m thrilled with how well the two pieces look. Wish me luck with the jurors. I’ll hear in March. The show will be in September in Los Angeles.

My exhibit is up and I’m very proud of it. If you can’t make it to the opening on the 8th, remember the show is up until the end of January and the gallery is open Tues.- Sat. from 11:00 to 5:00. I’d love to see you at the reception or maybe we can make a date to meet at the gallery and have coffee or something. It’s in a wonderful location in downtown Mill Valley, California, across from The Depot and next to Pete’s Coffee. Here are a couple photos. I’ll have more of the reception.

Gallery

My ruffles are now hanging in the window of the Room Gallery and they look great and are lit beautifully. They will be up for December and January. My own solo show will be for the month of January. The … Continue reading →

Gallery

Here are the four weavings chosen by Ann Pifer, the owner of The Grand Hand Gallery. It was fun to see her moving my pieces around in the gallery to see where to place them. When they were held up … Continue reading →

Gallery

Last Tuesday I traveled to the wine country to visit The Grand Hand Gallery in Napa. It’s on a busy street in the center of town and has an eclectic collection of wonderful art including fiber pieces. As their brochure … Continue reading →

At Convergence I needed a way to offer customers the option of using credit cards. What I needed to have was a smart phone. Then I got (for free) a gadget called Square Up which goes on top of the phone so you can swipe credit cards. What fun–for me and the customers who “signed” using a finger. Now I’m having fun with my iPhone–a toy that I really didn’t need. Pay Pal has just put out their own gadget.

My book table was laden with everything. The new, A Woven Retrospective, looked great and people loved it. I sold quite a few and several people said they would ask their guild library to order copies. I worked hard on all those books and since I sit in California in my studio all alone, I was greatly pleased to hear that lots of people are using them–and teachers, too. I especially made Weaving for Beginners for teachers, so that pleased me greatly. The Retrospective can be ordered from my website.

I got back from Convergence a week ago and have been exhausted. I think I’m coming out of it, finally. It was a lot of work and I had a good time. It was great to hear nice comments about my books from people all over the country. My retrospective book was well received, too. It was the first time I’ve shown my woven art and I’m thrilled at the validation and praise I got. It was expensive: I almost made my expenses, but not quite. That was disappointing.

I sent my things for my booth at Convergence in a big truck last Thursday–22 cartons. What a lot of work to get everything packed and inventoried (and priced)! I’ll have my new art book that is my retrospective, my art work itself, and my weaving books to sell. I hope people will want them. On the late night sale, I’m giving away my DVD free with any purchase. Come and say hello at Booth #535. Convention runs from July 18 through July 21 at the Long Beach, California Convention Center. There should be thousands there and anything you might want to buy when not in a class. It’s a lot of fun for me because I’ve gone for so many years there are friends I only see at these events.

My new art book, Woven Work: Retrospective of a Weaver, is in the final production stages. I’m thinking of doing a limited edition—perhaps including an original weaving that could be framed. Let me know what you think of the idea. I hope you’ll think it is as beautiful as I do. I’ve included pictures of almost everything I ever wove. There are over 60 pages of beautiful photographs. Click photo above for a closer look.

During this frantic time of my preparation for my keynote address and retrospective gallery show, I got a wonderful surprise when I first turned on the LEDs for my fiber optics weavings. I just got them back from the students at Cal Poly State University Materials Engineering Department in San Luis Obispo, CA. The students connected LEDs, batteries, etc, etc, to the pieces I wove with fiber optics threads. I will debut these pieces at the CNCH conference on May 18 at the Oakland Convention Center. Pass along this information to anyone who might want to attend. I’m really excited about this!

I spent the month of March preparing my keynote speech for the northern California weaving conference, CNCH. It will be May 17-20 at the Oakland Convention Center. It was a lot of work but fun figuring out what I could say in 1/2 hour. Believe me, there was a lot I had to relegate to the cutting room floor. It was hard to give up so many ideas. Maybe we can make a video and put it on line!

April will be devoted to preparing for my two classes and a retrospective of my work. I’ve already made the list for the exhibit for the labels, but now I need to be sure every piece is prepared and ironed, etc. I’m honored to have this recognition.

The two classes are about collapse weaving and supplementary warp–two of my favorite things. (I’ve signed up for CNCH 2013 to teach them again–also about using the paddle.

I’ve mentioned my fiber optics weaving project and the work on the blog and web site. These are just two things on my mind besides trying to weave the sewing thread warp and the wavy wefts warp. Another major item is making ebooks. Yet another is making an art book or a portfolio in book form. The keynote speech and seminars in Collapse Weaving and Supplementary Warp for our conference (CNCH) in May are also on my mind. I feel pregnant with at least 9 babies!

This is my first ruffle, maybe a year or two “old”. Today a special friend held it horizontally–it looked fabulous! I’m thrilled to be entering it in an exhibit where there will be mostly painters. I think it will hold its own in the show. There will be 144 pieces. I’ll keep you posted. Be sure to look at it horizontally (turn it 90 degrees).

More from Katie: “Also wondering, what is your inspiration for your pieces? I searched around on your blog and found beautiful work but couldn’t find how you had decided to use certain colors or what motivated you to do certain pieces.”

Usually my inspiration comes from what I am trying to accomplish. For the silk pieces (see the gallery) I wanted to see if I could create sheer cloth. I found the fine, fine silk on spools in my stash. They were easier to use than the silk skeins I had. Then I made several more warps with that silk after accomplishing the sheer that I wanted. I also tried to create moire. Now that the skeins are on spools, I want to work with them.

Moire

Often it’s the threads that I want to see what I can do with–or a weave structure. I wove many collapse and supplementary warp pieces, for example.

I like to get started on an experiment and see what inspiration then comes from within. I love it when an idea comes from inside my body. Often ideas start in my head, then the body comes in when I’m least expecting it.

This box and lid were woven with two layers with the supplementary warp threads (for the triangles) in between the layers. I used 8 shafts–4 for the two layers and 4 for the supplementary warp threads. They are woven with linen threads with embroidery floss for the triangles. There were an awfully lot of warp threads to work back into the cloth. I maybe spent a week doing that finishing job (happily, I might add).

Another piece in my show. There are two layers. To make the pleats, I wove the top layer quite a bit longer that the bottom layer for awhile. Then I joined to two layers together so the top layer made a “pleat” –rather, a soft pleat. Probably this was done on 4 shafts.

This is one of the pieces in my show. It is linen ikat dyed with indigo. The warps were tied and dyed (called warp ikat) in the borders. The center is weft ikat. The patterns in the weft ikat are were simply made by one or two ties on the skeins of weft thread. In other words, the length of each weft was determined by a few inches of weaving. Then small skeins of weft yarn were made to be the same length as the wefts. A few ties were made on the skeins that resisted the dye when the skeins were immersed in the dye. Where the ties were remained white while the rest of the yarn became blue. Each section was woven with a skein tied in a different way to create the different patterns.